Nidal Azzroun - Returning to Life

Date of joining SCD: 10 August 2014

“After graduating from nursing school, I started my mandatory service in the Syrian Army. However, after witnessing all the injustice, detention, and killing of innocent civilians, I decided to defect from the army and work in one of the field medical points. This gave me a chance to see the great work of Syria Civil Defence, including saving helpless civilians, alleviating people’s pain, and raising awareness in the community, which pushed me to join the local SCD team. One event took place a while back, which has made me since feel a great pride to be a member of this team.

"On that day, it was my shift to be at the centre, and the monitoring centre’s sirens were warning of overflights of aircraft in the skies above Al-Ghantou village. As we were starting to get up, we heard a strong explosion that shook the place, and we knew that it was in the village. We went quickly to the incident location, and the whole time we were thinking whether the number of victims would be large, whether we would be able to quickly pull out all those trapped under rubble and ensure none of them would die, and whether the aircrafts would target us with bombing while we were performing our search and rescue.

"Houses were destroyed, roofs had collapsed, and walls could fall at any moment, with rubble everywhere and large rubble pieces impeding our work. Civilians gathered at the site. Cries and whimpers were coming from the families of those missing or killed.

"The first person we could get out was a middle aged woman who had died under the piles of rubble. We continued digging and breaking roofs piled up on top of each other, and suddenly we found a little girl, no more than eight years old, lying motionless and not breathing, surrounded by rubble. I did not give in to her motionlessness and started primitive examinations on her, to no avail. I continued with more precise examinations, opened her mouth, and removed some soil that was in it, then gave her CPR. Suddenly, she started breathing again and began to cry. I transported her to a clinic so she could receive the necessary treatment for broken ribs and bruising of the lungs.

"I felt a great satisfaction, as if I were the one who came out alive. As if I was the one who was revived.